Our Work

These are
some current and recent area of work for VerdeNero and its associates. Talks and
presentations of relevance given to public forums are available for download in
the Documents section.
Please contact us
for more detail and for references.

Algal Biomass

Algal biomass
is today's everyone favorite bet for a biofuel feedstock that can be plentiful,
inexpensive and does not conflict with food crops for land, water and other
resources. While these promises are realistic, immense challenges needs to be
overcome for algae to fullfill them. The industry while increasingly well
fundend is still in its infancy and it is critical to distinguish hype from
reality. VerdeNero is working closely with key customers towards the scale up a novel concepts for the
cultivation, harvesting and fractionation of algal biomass with minimum energy
and nutrient inputs.

Biomass and Waste to Resouces

Using
biomass for energy predates the fossil fuel and industrial era and in certain
geographical locations - e.g. Scandinavia or some tropical areas - remains an
important part of the fuel mix for power production. Today dedicated biomass
plant or increased co-firing of biomass and/or organic waste derived fuels with
coals are seen as important tools to produce carbon neutral baseline power.
Unlike fossil fuel biomass logistics are challenging on any but local scale and
the integration with existing energy system is often limited. Pretreatment and
densification methods need to be developed to make biomass and organic waste
derived fuels more compatible with the existing technical and commercial
infrastructure. We have supported an
existing and established material handling equipment company in developing a
business plan for a novel concept in waste biomass densification for energy
applications and helped developers in selecting application specific
technologies. We are also very active to design new waste to resource solutions aiming to a zero landfill approach to waste management.

Retooling the Ethanol Industry

The corn
to ethanol industry, heralded just a couple of years ago as a key to solve US
energy problem is slowly recovering from a period of crisis resolving in major
corporate restructuring. Furthermore while economic viability is regained,
doubts about the wisdom of using corn for ethanol and the overall environmental
value of the industry persists. As the irrational enthusiasm of the past was
unjustified, so is the negativity of the present unwarranted. Corn ethanol is
enshrined as a key additive and component in the US fuel mix and while it is
important to understand its limit, its role is important. The us ethanol
industry can be profitable without subsidies and can considerably improve its
carbon footprint. We are working with a consortium of innovative companies with
a porfolio of technologies in an effort to redesign the corn ethanol process for
better utilization of co-products, increased net energy balance and considerably
reduced environmental footprint and energy consumptrion.

Novel Energy Systems

Small
scale highly efficient distributed (co)generation system can provide great
strides in energy efficient bypassing distribution losses and can help reduce
the carbon emission for each kWh consumed by the users. They also can provide
reliablity and redundancy to the power supply. This is the premise of a small
scale (1 to 2 kW) fuel oxide fuel cell appliance developed for the European
residential market. We are supporting an investiment group with identifying the
best strategy to bring to the North American market this approach by assessing
the opportunity to use the core technology around a US designed and
manufactured novel energy appliance suitable for the unique technical and
economic featurs of the North American market

Carbon Footprint

Many companies now carry out a life cycle analysis to
determine the carbon footprint of their processess and systems. Once the this
analysis is completed, one can identify the areas where intervation can be most
effective. We help our customer - working closely with our partners - to
identify which technology solution is most cost effective in the context of
their operation.